


The Assam Adventure

by KillClaudio



Category: A Study in Emerald - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Case Fic, Established Relationship, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 18:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21822703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KillClaudio/pseuds/KillClaudio
Summary: "Can you credit it, Watson?" he cried. "A poison? Something that might rid us of these foul creatures once and for all. Is it possible?""They are not gods," I reasoned. "We must assume, therefore, that they are mortal. Whatever is born can always die."
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Comments: 14
Kudos: 50
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	The Assam Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nahnahnahnah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahnahnahnah/gifts).



> Happy Holidays, nahnahnahnah!

I am no stranger to fear. No man is, no matter what lies we comfort ourselves with in the dark reaches of the night.

I will never forget lying beneath the stars on the eve of the Battle of Maiwand, while all around me came a ceaseless buzzing, as of a million flies, and somewhere in the darkness beyond our fires great shapes loomed, shuffling back and forth with a strange gait. For the first time in my life I feared the daylight, and what I might see by it. 

I killed men at Maiwand, doing no more than my duty, but overcome with a terrible pity for the Ghazis who died in the mud like animals. And yet in London I have murdered in cold blood and felt nothing. If it may be called murder, of those who can barely claim to be human. 

But they do claim to be human; at least in part. Prince Albert is an ordinary man, and the Queen's children are half-bloods. So it is too with the Unspeakable Kaiser, the Czar Unanswerable, and all those who preside over the Old World; their consorts are human. Perhaps they are not capable of breeding with each other. I do not know. Until that day our our victims had all been more than half human, and it took a sharp knife and a strong arm to dispatch them. How we would deal with the princes and princesses, we did not know. Still less what manner of weapon could possibly be used against the Queen, as she spread her great bulk through all the rooms of the palace and squatted there.

Until, one day, a weapon emerged. 

I had spent the afternoon making house calls, doing what little my medical training could for the poor wretches of the Rookery. I returned to the cramped rooms I shared with Holmes to find him entertaining two of his agents. 

'The Irregulars', he called them, and indeed the name was fitting. Many evil things dwell in the sewers of this city, and it only needs an unwary step to be caught in their trap. I have seen children scarred beyond all recognition, missing limbs, withered hands, a shaking like palsy. People did not like to look at them in the street, and so they passed by almost invisible. A useful talent for a spy. They paid dear for it. 

Holmes seized me by the arm the moment I walked through the door. "Watson! My dear fellow, here you are at last."

Miss Gibson and Miss Madeley were two of the most formidable of Holmes' little army. They were taking tea on our tiny sofa, looking for all the world like two elegant ladies paying calls. 

"Come," Holmes was saying to Miss Gibson, "tell Dr Watson what you have learned."

Miss Gibson inclined her head to me. "As I'm sure you've been informed, Dr Watson, we've been following Professor Moriarty."

"Dangerous work," I remarked, with a sharp look at Holmes, for I have often protested the idea of sending ladies, even ones such as these, on such an errand. "I hope you were careful to keep out of sight."

"Out of sight, but within hearing range."

"Oh, but you'll never guess what we overheard!" cried Miss Madeley, the youngest and most exuberant of the Irregulars. Her companion tried to hush her, but she was bursting with the news. "Professor Moriarty has a secret laboratory!"

I was astonished. "But why should it be secret? He has the confidence of the Queen. What reason has he to hide his work?"

"Once again, Watson, you have unerringly put your finger on the important point. What reason indeed?"

"He surely cannot have changed his allegiance?"

"I hardly think so. All his diabolical criminal tendencies are given free rein by the Palace. What could he hope to gain by betraying them? But pray continue, ladies."

"We overheard the Professor giving instructions to one of his associates," Miss Gibson said, with a quelling look in Miss Madeley's direction. "He was speaking of several experiments he has been conducting. And then he said, 'Heaven help us if the antidote cannot be found.'"

I crossed to the sideboard and poured tea as I contemplated this. "Princess Mary has not been seen for a week. Rumours have been circulating."

"Indeed. People whisper that she is unwell, and when have any of them ever been unwell?" Holmes rubbed his hands together. "It will serve, Watson. It will serve."

"Some kind of virus?" I asked. 

"No, no. Moriarty said an _antidote_ , did he not, Miss Gibson? Not a cure. An antidote. This is some form of poison."

 _Poison_. We had never come across any such thing. None with the blood of Gloriana needed to eat, but they ate and drank and it seemed to have no effect on them. In 1873 some poor unfortunate had thrown sulphuric acid at the Prince of Wales, and he had brushed it off like water. 

"Miss Gibson, Miss Madeley," Holmes bowed to them, "you have performed admirably." He handed out shillings with a liberal hand. "Will you take some more tea? And perhaps a slice of cake?"

But they preferred instead to vanish down the dark alleyways of the rookery. Holmes and I let them go. Such redoubtable women are not to be questioned. 

The smile Holmes turned on me was a poor, thin thing, for we have had little enough to smile about these past few years. Still, besotted as I was, it was enough to make my heart soar. I stepped across the room and kissed him lightly, but Holmes was too wound up to suffer it for long.

"Can you credit it, Watson?" he cried. "A poison? Something that might rid us of these foul creatures once and for all. Is it possible?"

"They are not gods," I reasoned. "We must assume, therefore, that they are mortal. Whatever is born can always die." 

"Well said! Well said, my boy." His pacing brought him back towards me and he pressed a hard kiss to my mouth before spinning towards the fireplace. "They are not gods. And everything has a weakness. Well, come along, Watson. No use taking off your coat. We must investigate at once."

Miss Gibson had given Holmes an address in Farringdon. It was supper time and the streets were quiet, but the shop across the road had a low awning that hid us in half-darkness while we examined the building. It was some five storeys, recently constructed in red brick, and divided into small lots of offices. Clerks came and went through the doors and in and out of the small side door on Hosier Lane, shutting up the offices of the various insurance companies and stockbrokers and solicitors that occupied the building. 

"There is a side door in that alley." Holmes pointed to the side of the building just as a servant came out. "The passage then leads up to a landing on the main staircase."

"Our way in?"

"Perhaps." 

One by one the clerks left until only a handful of lights were visible. Holmes indicated a window, high up on the third floor, where a lamp still burned. Every so often the shape of a man crossed in front of the window, silhouetted in the light. 

"Too short to be our friend Moriarty," Holmes whispered. "He surely takes his supper now. He would not dare to leave the place unguarded, but he must not draw attention to himself. The royal family would not have us know they have an Achilles' heel. Ah, what's this?"

A man had emerged from a chop house further up the street and was hurrying towards the building. He vanished inside and a few minutes later appeared again in the lighted window above. The other man spoke to him briefly, they shook hands, and then the second man made for the door. A minute later he came out and stomped away up the street. 

"The changing of the guard," Holmes said. "Dressed like clerks, do you see? But I fancy these are ordinary security men, not some elite club. They are careless. They do not look about them. Let us go inside."

Holmes strode purposefully through the door as though he came into the building every day. The commissionaire made no move to stop us, and we climbed the stairs unchallenged. At the top were two corridors stretching off to left and right, and a row of glossy black doors with small brass plaques. Some of the ordinary clerks must also have been working late, for lights glowed under three or four. 

Our target was at the end of the row on the right, facing the street where we had been standing. Holmes moved quietly to the end of the row and looked at the plaque. "Hah!" he muttered softly. "'Worth's Chemical Mixtures'. Hah!"

There was nothing else in the bare little corridor, not even a cupboard. We descended once more, and went over to the commissionaire's lodge, a cosy little nook set into the side of the entrance hall with a half-door enclosing it. 

"Excuse me?"

The commissionaire looked up. "What can I do for you, gents?" 

"Which office does Hatton Insurance occupy?"

The commissionaire ran a finger down his ledger. "I'm sorry, gentlemen, there's no Hatton Insurance listed here."

"This is 362 Kirkhall Street, isn't it?"

"Bless you, sir, no. This is number 263. You want to go about a twenty-five yards up the road, and the building will be on your right."

"Ah, of course! Thank you."

Holmes said nothing more until we had stepped out into the chilly night. He pulled his collar up against the wind and glanced back at the silhouette still at the window. "At least now we have got a look at the lodge. Did you notice the bells? The wires go into the far wall, and no doubt come out in that cupboard next to the stairs. Very instructive. Well, doctor, I suppose you'll have no objection in joining me for an evening stroll tomorrow?"

"None at all," I said. 

"Dress like a clerk," my friend said. "Black, and nothing too fine. We must blend in."

We turned towards home arm in arm, and when we reached the edge of the refuge that shelters us, I took his hand. 

One may see many strange things in the rookery of St Giles, that den of vice where even the police fear to tread. Women walking about in men's clothing, riotous dancing in the streets, gin shops open until the early hours. If one is observant, one may even see two men holding hands as their tired feet take them home, or sharing a quiet kiss. 

There was a time when I would no more have considered kissing a man than plunging a dagger into Her Majesty's heart. But I am a different man now. Once you see through one lie, you see through them all. And Holmes has always had a gift for making the most impenetrable mysteries seem absurdly simple. 

So it was that after Holmes locked the doors of our little garret and I lit a candle, we climbed into bed together. I drew him close, taking comfort from the steady thrum of his heartbeat against mine, his presence a certain charm against the horrors of the dark. The rules don't seem so important any more.

* * *

The next evening I returned to the street at the appointed time. Holmes had vanished after breakfast with instructions to disguise myself as I might and leave my revolver at home, and I had not seen him for the rest of the day. But now as I stood waiting an elderly man emerged from the chop house, and limped towards me with his head bent. 

I was too familiar with my friend's disguises to feel much alarm. Indeed, as he settled beside me in the lee of the doorway he wore a slight frown. "I believe my tricks begin to seem commonplace in your eyes, Watson."

"Never," I assured him with a squeeze of his hand. "What have you been up to?"

Holmes indicated the chop house. "Our guard once again takes supper before his evening duties. I'll wager he'll have a tiring time this evening."

"You have drugged him?" I asked. "To put him to sleep?"

"Not so much as that. That would only arouse suspicion. But I suspect many requests for coffee to come to the commissionnaire's lodge tonight."

I remembered Holmes' interest in the bells from the previous night. "His requests will go unanswered." 

"Now, my dear Watson, we must simply wait."

Presently, the night guard came hurrying across the street and went upstairs, and his fellow put on his hat and coat and headed for home. For two hours nothing stirred in that little square of yellow light where our target sat, not even the faint stirring of the curtains. 

Holmes was "He has fallen asleep," Holmes said. "Curse him, he will ruin all our plans." 

At that moment a shadow crossed the window, and the guard reached up to ring the bell. 

"Ahah!" Holmes cried. "Now is our moment. Get ready, Watson." 

The commissionaire did not stir from his lodge. The guard stood twice more and tugged at the bell with increasing agitation, before crossing the room towards the door. 

"Now!" Holmes whispered, and we leapt across the road and in an instant we had let ourselves silently in through the side door and stood in the little entryway. Holmes pressed against the wall with a finger to his lips, pulling me with him, and a moment later we heard the guard clatter noisily down the stairs, calling for the commissionaire.

In a flash we were up the stairs and along the corridor. We stepped silently into the room, and I gasped at the sight before us. Every wall was covered in glass-fronted cabinets, stretching up towards the ceiling, and each cabinet with filled with rack upon rack of test tubes, all labelled in tiny cramped handwriting.

"It takes precisely four and a half minutes to boil water on that spirit-lamp," Holmes murmured. "Another minute or so for the coffee. We must hurry. But which is the poison and which the antidote? His notes, Watson."

Moriarty's leather-bound notebooks were stacked in one corner of the room. My heart sank as I opened the top one to see page after page of nonsense. "A cipher," I said. 

"Knowing Moriarty, it will not be easy to break. However, we may not need to. Observe. He is a neat fellow, is he not?"

As I looked around the room, the flow of Moriarty's work became clear. His bench was set up along one wall. On the right were cupboard containing the results of his experiments, each numbered to correspond to his notes. On the left, the cupboards all contained rows of the same dark substance, tiny flakes of black shimmering in their tubes. This must be the subject of his experiments.

Holmes passed the lock picks over to me. "Quickly, Watson. I will do what I can with his notes."

I breathed out slowly to steady my shaking hands and got to work, counting in my head as I did. How long had it been? How many minutes until the guard returned? But the lock gave easily under my fingers, and no sooner did I have the doors open then Holmes was slipping a vial into his pocket. 

"Lock it and come away," he said, and shut the doors with a click. 

I almost leapt out of my skin as a sound like all the church bells in London came suddenly from above us. We looked up to see a tiny, almost invisible thread stretching from the cupboard across the ceiling, and on the end, half-concealed by the light, a series of bells. A trap.

"The guard would have heard that from across the city." Holmes leapt towards the door. "Quickly!"

We both vanished through the door and ran for the stairs, hoping to get down to the landing and out through the side door before anyone saw. But at the top of the stairs we could already see the guard's lantern as he climbed. He would reach the landing long before us. 

"This way!" Holmes whispered, and seized my arm. 

He pulled me along the corridor and in through one of the unlocked doors to a room containing two small desks. Holmes lit the lamp on each desk and hung his coat from the peg. I did likewise and we sat, pulling out papers onto the desk and generally trying to make it look as though we had been hard at work. 

From the corridor came the sound of feet moving purposefully about, and voices raised in anger. The guard was calling down to the commissionaire to telephone for the police. 

"Holmes, we must get rid of the vial," I said. "It is the only thing that can incriminate us. Throw it out of the window."

"And lose our only hope of final victory? Besides, it would be clear at once where it had come from." Holmes cocked his head to one side, listening. "Ah, the police are here already. I fancy Professor Moriarty had his old friend the Inspector waiting nearby in case something should happen. But do not fear, Watson. Lestrade lacks imagination. That is his downfall."

A few minutes later there was a knock at the door, and Holmes opened it to reveal a sallow rat-faced, dark-eyed fellow, no more than five feet four, who glared at the two of us as though we were condemned criminals. 

"Good evening," Holmes said pleasantly. 

"Good evening, gentlemen. May I ask what you're doing here at this time of the evening?"

"Working late," Holmes said blandly. 

"I suppose you're not aware that a robbery has been committed on these very premises this evening?"

"Is that what all the commotion was? I'm afraid we were too intent on our work, ah, Officer…?"

"Inspector," the man replied. "Inspector Lestrade. Under the circumstances, I'm afraid I'm going to have to search you."

My blood ran cold. I seemed to feel the vial in Holmes' pocket as though it had its own gravity. "Of course," I said quickly, moving forward. The only chance now was for me to distract Lestrade while Holmes disposed of it. I did not dare look at him, but I knew that he would use whatever opportunity I could give him. "We have no objections, Inspector. Please."

Holmes stepped back out of the way, brushing lightly against Lestrade in the small room. Lestrade pulled open my coat and searched my pockets, then patted me down along my arms and legs. Throughout it all, Holmes stood calmly in Lestrade's line of sight, not moving. 

Satisfied, Lestrade moved on to Holmes. Wishing with all my heart that I had brought my revolver, I moved casually around the table, ready to spring before he could call out. I wished I had brought my revolver. But Lestrade's hand came out empty. 

After a thorough examination of us both, he stepped back. "Did you hear anything unusual this evening?"

"Yes, a few minutes ago we heard loud footsteps coming up the stairs, and then the man in the room at the end of the corridor calling for the police."

"But nothing before that?"

"No, not a thing."

"Hmm." Lestrade nodded. "Well, none of the others heard anything either. They must have got out the window somehow. Thank you for your time, gentlemen."

We heard Lestrade go back down the stairs and speak to the commissionaire for a moment, and then he went out into the street. As soon as he was gone Holmes threw on his coat. "Come, Watson!"

For my part I was very glad to quit that room forever. We went out by the side door, as we had come in, and saw Lestrade walking ahead of us. We followed him at a discreet distance, keeping to the shadows. 

"Moriarty knows of the Restorationists," I said. "He will suspect us."

"My dear fellow, what if he does? He will not find us."

"And we have lost the test tube."

"Is your faith in me so easily shaken, Watson?" Holmes teased. "All is not yet lost." 

"What on earth did you do with it? I thought we were headed straight for the Tower."

"I slipped it into the good Inspector's pocket while he was examining you. It is now in the very last place he will ever think to look for it." 

I laughed aloud. "As always, Holmes, you amaze me. But how are we to retrieve it?"

"I leave that to the Irregulars. Miss Gibson and Miss Madeley are taking their evening constitutional. There, see? I need only give the signal to let them know which pocket it is in. But we must keep out of sight!"

Holmes pulled me into a doorway, where, craning my neck, I saw the two Irregulars, arm in arm, greeting Inspector Lestrade. To his credit he looked them in the eye and bowed courteously, and in response to some comment from Miss Gibson he pulled out his watch. While he was distracted, Miss Madeley slipped a light hand in his pocket, and withdrew it before he could see. He said something to them, pleasantries were exchanged, and they moved away. 

"Let us await them in the Rookery," Holmes said in my ear. "Our prize is perfectly safe." 

Miss Gibson and Miss Madeley awaited us with a trace of smugness, to which they were well entitled. Holmes was his usual courteous self to them, but he was brief. We had work to do. 

No matter where we have lived—in poky little garrets, damp and dingy boarding rooms—Holmes has never been without his chemical instruments. He pulled them out now, and we rolled up our sleeves. Holmes tipped a little of the substance out onto a glass dish, and examined it carefully. He rubbed it between his fingers and sniffed it. Then he fell back in his chair and began to laugh. 

"Holmes?" I cried, alarmed, for I feared the drug had addled his mind, but he waved me away. 

"Tea," he said, putting his head in his hands. "The tube is full of tea."

"Tea?" I repeated. 

"Assam, unless I miss my guess. Of that peculiar strong type favoured by tradesmen."

I sat heavily in my chair, and together we regarded the useless object lying on the table. "Was it all a trick?" I asked. "Could you glean anything from Moriarty's notes?"

"Very little," Holmes sighed. "It would take me days to crack the code. There was a symbol often repeated—a capital F, and then a nine—but there are any number of possible meanings. F is the sixth letter of the alphabet...could six become nine? Then F would become I. But I am certain it was not a substitution cipher, and that would be far too simple for a man of Moriarty's intelligence…" 

I let him speak, turning the problem over in my mind. F9. The two symbols had tugged at some thread in my mind, but I could not quite grasp it. Something I had read in a recent medical journal…symbols…F… 

"Fluorine," I said suddenly. 

Holmes stared at me in absolute silence for perhaps three seconds, then he leapt from his chair and seized me around the waist. "Fluorine!" he cried. "Watson, let it be known that your genius is unsurpassed in the country. In the entire world. Fluorine! Can it—yes, it might be." He rushed to his chemical kit and started haphazardly pulling out bottles. 

"There is only a very small quantity in tea," I said. "But if it was grown in the wrong soil…and a very strong cup…"

"Was apparently enough to make her ill. And pure fluorine, dissolved in wine or brandy…"

It was more of a possibility than we had ever had before. I grasped at it with all the hope I could muster. 

"It is not dangerous to people?" Holmes asked. 

"Only in large quantities, I believe. But it is a recent discovery, and we know little—"

"I will have to test it."

He meant on himself. "You will do no such thing!" I said sharply. It was past midnight, and Holmes had clearly pushed himself past exhaustion and on into that dazed state where a man will run until he drops. "Come to bed," I said to him. "You need rest so that we can plan our attack."

"Yes, yes." Holmes took off his jacket and waistcoat and hung them over a chair, then lay down in bed in his shirt. I lay down with him, my arms around him, stroking his back slowly. Gradually his breathing slowed and his muscles relaxed. 

"There is a dinner in honour of the Prince of Wales next month," Holmes said with a yawn. "That will be the moment to test our theory. His wine. He loves to drink, and gamble, and whore with the serving girls. He will be undefended."

"The Irregulars will have no trouble slipping it into his wine."

Holmes smiled. "I rather think I want the thrill of doing that myself. And if it works, then we will look to the Queen."

I thought of the great bulk that squatted in the Palace, 700 years old and never the slightest sign of change. And watching us, always watching. "Will it affect her?"

"Who knows? She is not half-human as the rest are. But if the results are good—yes, I think so. But it would need considerably more than we could get in a glass of wine."

"A bomb," I said, drifting towards sleep myself. 

"Perhaps. That would certainly be the necessary amount."

"The Czar Unanswerable," I said. "He is the smallest. And he goes about in St Petersburg, instead of sitting in the palace."

"And our Russian friends would be very glad to try it, with our help. An excellent idea, Watson. Perhaps it is time for the Strand Players to go touring again, hmm? That will give us an opportunity to observe them. And to plan."

Holmes yawned again, and turned up his face to look at me. I bent to press a gentle kiss to his lips.

"Go to sleep. In the morning we will plan." 

He smiled tiredly. "Are you ready to start a revolution, John?"

"With all my heart."

Within minutes he was asleep. 

They would have us believe that the universe is cold and uncaring; that our minds are ill equipped to comprehend it and the attempt would drive us mad. But I am a man of science, and will be one until my dying day. I must trust that knowledge is always better than ignorance, light better than darkness, and that the universe has furnished us with a solution.

Holmes has arranged for the Strand Players to tour the Continent. Soon they will be performing my little play before all the crowned heads of Europe; by March we will be in St Petersburg. And then we shall see. Perhaps we will live to see humanity free once more.

Until that day, Holmes and I do what all men must; we live in hope.

**Author's Note:**

> Alexander II really was assassinated in 1881, which I'm assuming is the "apocalyptic recent events in Russia" referred to at the end of A Study in Emerald.


End file.
